Just Want Privacy cancelled an appointment scheduled for yesterday morning at which they were supposed to turn in signatures calling for an anti-transgender referendum to be placed on the November ballot.

The group claims they had collected 190,985 signatures. In order to qualify for the ballot, 246,372 valid signatures of registered state voters are required. The secretary of state's office recommends 325.000 signatures be submitted, in case of duplicates or invalid signatures.

The initiative aimed to undo a state rule that allowed transgender individuals to use bathrooms and other facilities for the gender they identify with.

The failure by Just Want Privacy underscores the fact that extreme anti-LGBT activists are overestimating the public's opposition to trans rights and they're also underestimating their own base's passion on this issue.

--Sarah McBride, HRC

The campaign posted a note on its website saying that it "will not give up the fight to protect the state's girls and women and is considering all of its options for repealing the "Open Locker Room" rule."

The current law is grotesquely dangerous and in need of dramatic revision. We should have this issue on our minds when we vote this November because a more thoughtful legislature could solve this problem without the challenges of putting an issue on the ballot.

--Just Want Privacy

McBride said that she expects a number of anti-LGBT bills to reappear next year as state legislatures convene.

I think that there's no question that we're still in the middle of a concerted, organized effort to target the transgender community. It's certainly not over. But I think the country is changing, and changing rapidly.

--McBride

Critics of I-1515 have accused the campaign of playing on people’s unnecessary fears and anxieties. One such critic was Washington Won’t Discriminate, which responded to the news Thursday:

Washingtonians have sent a clear message – we won’t discriminate.

As a transgender man, I’m encouraged that voters didn’t buy the pitch that repealing our state’s non-discrimination protections for transgender people would somehow make everyone safer. Washingtonians value fairness and equality and we believe that everyone in our state should be able to earn a living, frequent a business, earn an education, and raise a family free from the fear of discrimination.

--Seth Kirby, Washington Won't Discriminate

Joseph Backholm, director of the Family Policy Institute of Washington, had suggested the following during the campaign:

For the gentlemen, what I would encourage you to do, if you are so bold and to make the point, take your petition and stand outside the women’s restroom at the mall. If any of the women don’t want to sign it, just go ahead and follow them in [laughter from crowd]. Maybe this will be a better time to sign our little petition, and we can make the point that way.

--Backholm

He claimed later that was a joke.

King County Sheriff John Urquhart told KIRO 7 that such a tactic would be an arrestable offense. However, Backholm says it represents the current challenge.

You have a legal right to be present based on your gender expression or gender identity. Those can be temporary or permanent things. It at least gives a legal defense to claim that if I’m not harassing anybody, if I claim to be a particular gender you can’t prove that I’m not. That’s a factual reality. You can’t prove that somebody does not express a particular gender and that’s part of the trouble for the entire underlying rule.

--Backholm